Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi revealed the names of four astronauts who have been selected for the Gaganyaan mission and are undergoing training for the country’s maiden human space flight mission. They were trained at the Yuri Gagarin Training Centre in Russia.

The four people selected for this people are: Prashanth Nair, Angad Prathap, Ajit Krishnan, and Shubhanshu Shukla.

"I am happy that today I got the opportunity to meet these astronauts and present them in front of the country. I want to congratulate them on behalf of the entire country...You are the pride of today's India... These are not just 4 names and 4 humans, but 4 forces taking 140 crore aspirations to space. After a long period of 40 years, an Indian is set to go into space. But this time, the time is ours, countdown ours, and rocket is also ours," the PM said.

"India's success in the space sector is sowing the seeds of scientific temperament in the country's young generation," PM Modi said in his address at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre.

The Gaganyaan aims to demonstrate human spaceflight ability by launching crew members into an orbit of 400kms for a three-day mission and bring them back to Earth by landing in Indian sea waters. ISRO successfully completed the acceptance tests of the flight engine identified for the first unmanned Gaganyaan (G1) mission, tentatively scheduled for the second quarter of 2024. This engine will power the upper stage of the human-rated LVM3 vehicle and has a thrust capability of 19 to 22 tonnes with a specific impulse of 442.5 seconds.

This comes in the backdrop of the success of ISRO in 2023, with the soft landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the dark side of the moon and the launch of Aditya L-1 which is India’s first solar mission. This is followed by massive aspirations which include the Gaganyaan mission, Indian Space Station and India’s first man to moon.

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